Menlo Park: Little House looks to attract a younger audience

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Clifford and Elen Planchon applaud The Woodside Elementary School Jazz Band during the studentÕs performance for seniors at the Little House Activity Center in Menlo Park on Tuesday, April 24, 2012. Teacher Beth Dameron is the instructor for the 30 students, who range from grades six to eight.(Kirstina Sangsahachart/ Daily News)

As people continue to live longer — and more active — lives, the go-to handle for the Medicare-eligible demographic is falling out of favor. Try “older adults,” they say. And don’t even think about using “elderly.”

The anti-“senior” movement extends to Little House Activity Center in Menlo Park, where the director has taken the offending word out of any promotional materials.

“One of the challenges we’ve had is, the whole concept of what a senior is has changed,” said Little House director Peter Olson. “We’ve been trying to rebrand this as an adult community center.”

In fact, Olson has been reaching out to the younger-than-Medicare set pretty much since becoming director of the Peninsula Volunteers facility five years ago. Little House now offers such Generation X-savvy fitness classes as Pilates and Zumba.

“The classes are geared toward the after-work crowd,” he said. “We know that (places like) YogaSource, that’s where most of the 30-year-olds are going to go, but some people don’t like the corporate atmosphere.”

Olson stresses that Little House isn’t abandoning older baby boomers for a more youthful crowd. For instance, Little House recently launched a chair yoga class, and it continues such wellness activities as “Arthritis Exercise,” geared at increasing flexibility, and “Feldenkrais,” which enhances balance and brain function through gentle movements. Fitness classes — also including tai chi, Jazzercise and line dancing — are broken into three categories, which Olson dubbed as “maintaining function, people getting back in shape, and advanced classes.”

For the time being, at least, the bulk of the center’s clientele is 65 and older. But that could all change after Saturday’s open house, just the second time Little House has held such an event in recent years. The first one took place in April.

“I’m really trying to reintroduce Little House to the Menlo Park community,” Olson said. “One of the things I always hear is that people see the building, but they don’t really know what goes on inside.”

One such person is Olson’s father, in his 70s, who balked at the idea of ever attending a senior center, but inadvertently helped Olson understand the disconnect between the center and its demographic.

“He said, ‘I don’t want to go to a senior center,’ and I said, ‘But you’re 75,’ ” Olson said. “He’s very typical. … It’s his mind-set. He’s a very active individual and he has his group of friends, but what happens when you start losing those?”

Many of the center’s activities are designed with a group in mind, for that very reason: As people age, their circle of friends shrinks.

“My focus is on embracing getting older,” Olson said. “One thing about fitness; if you’re not doing it, it’s hard to get started, (but) people come in and make friends, they realize they’re not alone, and exercise is secondary. … We’re really trying to move people from isolation to socialization.”

Olson has been helped along in his mission by the Stanford School of Business Alumni Consulting Team, which recently conducted a 5-month-long assessment of the center’s finances and plans for the future, as well as a task force that Peninsula Volunteers launched to oversee the center’s growth.

“What the Fresh Start committee really did was infuse us with innovation,” Olson said.

Little House offers dozens of classes in the categories of health and wellness, arts and crafts, languages and computer skills, offering a mix of free and competitively priced programs, the latter of which cost less with a Little House membership. For instance, “Stepping On,” a seven-week program with the aim of building confidence in mobility and reducing falls, is free, but “Introduction to Drawing,” a six-part course over six weeks, costs $120 for members, $130 for nonmembers and $40 for a drop-in class, including materials.

At the open house, on top of these activities, the center will put on demonstrations in gardening and ceramics, history classes, current events and intergenerational activities.

“It’s not a dreary old open house,” Olson said. “If you’ve never done tai chi and want to do a 20-minute session, just show up. … We’ll have hot dogs and soda for free, people giving tours, we’ll have booths with a podiatrist, acupuncture.”

Little House currently has 900 active members and serves roughly 3,500 people a year. The center dates back to 1949, two years after the nonprofit Peninsula Volunteers was born, and was originally housed in a cottage on Menlo Avenue. It is considered one of the oldest active senior facilities in the United States, according to local historians Michael Svanevik and Shirley Burgett in their book, “Menlo Park: Beyond the Gate.”

IF YOU GOLittle House Activity Center is holding an open house from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at its facility, 800 Middle Ave., Menlo Park. There will be demonstrations of the center’s fitness programs, including Jazzercise, Zumba, hatha yoga, chair yoga, line dancing, massage and tech programs, as well as raffle drawings every 30 minutes, beginning at 10:30 a.m. For more information, visit http://tinyurl.com/littleopenhouse.